Leon Trotsky: The Transitional
programme

Open the Road to the Woman Worker! Open the Road to the Youth!

The defeat of the Spanish Revolution engineered by its "leaders,"
the shameful bankruptcy of the People's Front in France, and the exposure of the
Moscow juridical swindles—these three facts in their aggregate deal an
irreparable blow to the Comintern and, incidentally, grave wounds to its allies:
the Social Democrats and Anarcho-syndicalists. This does not mean, of course,
that the members of these organizations will immediately turn to the Fourth
International. The older generation, having suffered terrible defeats, will
leave the movement in significant numbers. In addition, the Fourth International
is certainly not striving to become an asylum for revolutionary invalids,
disillusioned bureaucrats and careerists. On the contrary, against a possible
influx into our party of petty bourgeois elements, now reigning in the apparatus
of the old organizations, strict preventive measures are necessary: a prolonged
probationary period for those candidates who are not workers, especially former
party bureaucrats: prevention from holding any responsible post for the first
three years, etc. There is not and there will not be any place for careerism,
the ulcer of the old internationals, in the Fourth International. Only those who
wish to live for the movement, and not at the expense of the movement, will find
access to us. The revolutionary workers should feel themselves to be the
masters. The doors of our organization are wide open to them.

Of course, even among the workers who had at one time risen to the first
ranks, there are not a few tired and disillusioned ones. They will remain, at
least for the next period as bystanders. When a program or an organization wears
out the generation which carried it on its shoulders wears out with it. The
movement is revitalized by the youth who are free of responsibility for the
past. The Fourth International pays particular attention to the young generation
of the proletariat. All of its policies strive to inspire the youth with belief
in its own strength and in the future. Only the fresh enthusiasm and aggressive
spirit of the youth can guarantee the preliminary successes in the struggle;
only these successes can return the best elements of the older generation to the
road of revolution. Thus it was thus it will be.

Opportunist organizations by their very nature concentrate their chief
attention on the top layers of the working class and therefore ignore both the
youth and the women workers. The decay of capitalism, however, deals its
heaviest blows to the woman as a wage earner and as a housewife. The sections of
the Fourth International should seek bases of support among the most exploited
layers of the working class; consequently, among the women workers. Here they
will find inexhaustible stores of devotion, selflessness and readiness to
sacrifice.

Down with the bureaucracy and careerism! Open the road to the youth! Turn
to the woman worker! These slogans are emblazoned on the banner of the
Fourth International. Under the banner of the Fourth International!